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| Birth Name(s) : Padma Lakshmi |
Date of Birth: N/A |
| Status:
Dating
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Partner:
Salman Rushdie |
| Profession:
Actor/Model/Public Figure |
Official Site
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Full Padma Lakshmi Biography
From high-fashion model to host of a cooking show might appear to be an unlikely journey, but not if you're Padma Lakshmi.
Even when traveling around the world as a model, Padma was always on the lookout to add to her culinary repertoire. Born in southern India, she had warm childhood memories of cooking with her female relatives as they carefully grated coconuts, shelled peas, and trimmed fresh mangoes.
As she globe-trotted on photo shoots, she found comfort in preparing recipes from her childhood, and soon she branched into the cuisines of the countries she visited. "My first big editorial shoot was in Morocco...where I learned about fiery harissa and couscous. While shooting French lingerie in Bali, I learned how to make a low-calorie fish dish I tasted there."
Padma spent much of her adolescence in the United States. She attended Clark University in Massachusetts and received a bachelor's degree in theater arts. Although she had wanted to be a model from a young age, her mother was determined that college should come first. "My mother's ideas on the subject were quite clear," Padma notes. "If I was beautiful at seventeen, I would be beautiful at twenty-one when I graduated from college."
While studying in Spain during her last semester of college, she was sent on her first modeling job. Since then, she has been featured in such magazines as Vogue, Elle, and Glamour, and has worked with many international designers. Her career has also taken her into feature films and television in Germany and Italy. Among other places, she has lived in Milan and Los Angeles, and she's currently a resident of New York. In 1999, Padma published a cookbook called Easy Exotic: A Model's Lowfat Recipes from Around the World (Hyperion). |
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Additional Padma Lakshmi Biography
Padma Parvati Lakshmi, Lady Rushdie (born September 1, 1970 in Chennai, India) is an Indian-American cookbook author, actress, and model who has described herself as the first well-known model from India. She has been the host of the reality television program Top Chef since season two and is an ambassador for the United Nations Development Fund for Women.
She was born into a Tamil Brahmin family in 1970 and raised in Madras, India and the United States. Her first name means "lotus" in Sanskrit, as well as "pearl" or "jewel." Parvati is a consort of Shiva. Lakshmi is the name of the Hindu goddess of wealth.
Her parents' only child, Lakshmi is the daughter of an executive with Pfizer and his first wife, Vijaya, a nurse who presently specializes in suicide prevention. The senior Lakshmis separated when their daughter was one and divorced a year later. Both parents later remarried; her mother's third and present husband is a plumber. She reportedly had no further contact with her father until 1998.
When she was 14 years old, she was involved in a serious automobile accident, causing an injury of her right arm, which required surgery leaving a 7 inch scar, between her elbow and shoulder.
By a later marriage of her father's, Lakshmi has a half-brother and a half-sister, who was an actress and classical dancer but is now pursuing a career with special-needs children. As Lakshmi said in an interview published in The Guardian, "My father had quit his job as an executive at Pfizer to manage her career. That was kind of like rubbing salt in the wound. I didn't understand why he wanted that relationship with her, and not with me."
Reportedly, she spent part of her childhood attending elementary school in Chennai, India. Lakshmi is a 1992 graduate of Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, where she received a B.A. with honors in Theater Arts..
Lakshmi was brought up as a vegetarian and has admitted that because of this, she sometimes becomes "squeamish" when sampling other cultural delicacies.
On April 17, 2004, in New York City, Lakshmi married the novelist Salman Rushdie, to whom she was introduced at a party hosted by the journalist and editor Tina Brown. By him, she has two stepsons, Zafar and Milan. On July 2, 2007 the couple filed for divorce, shortly after Rushdie was granted a knighthood.
When questioned about Rushdie's age (he is seven years younger than her father) and her long estrangement from her father (whom she has described as "the most sexy, manic, in-shape, lean, tall, handsome man I have ever met",) Lakshmi has said that there may be a correlation: “I think that we are attracted to what we feel we need."
Lakshmi has been described in The New York Times in 2005 as "a semicelebrated hustler"; the article further stated that she "stands for a love of money and commodity" in the fashion world. Rushdie took offense at the article, as did Lakshmi, though later, as she told The Guardian, her top-modelling days are behind her, but she does accept assignments "when there are enough zeros on the end."
Lakshmi's career began at age 20, when she was discovered by a high-profile modeling agent in Spain while sitting in a cafe. As she has stated, “I was the first Indian model to have a career in Paris, Milan and New York. I’m the first one to admit that I was a novelty.”
She has modeled for top designers such as Emanuel Ungaro, Ralph Lauren, and Alberta Ferretti and done ad campaigns for Roberto Cavalli and Versus. She was a favorite model of the photographer Helmut Newton, whose photographs of her often highlighted the large scar on her right arm.
She has appeared on the magazine covers of Cosmopolitan - January 2002 , Vogue - May 2004, L'Officiel India - October 2004, You – December 19, 2004, Shoo - Spring 2005, Harper's Bazaar - October 2005, Newsweek - March 6, 2006, Asian Woman – May/June 2006, Avenue - July/August 2006, and Industry - February/March 2007.
Padma Lakshmi made a 2002 guest appearance as alien princess Kaitaama in Precious Cargo, the 37th episode of the popular science fiction TV series Star Trek: Enterprise. She was also hostess of Domenica In, Italy's top-rated television show. She portrayed Sean Bean's nemesis in the 2004 -2005 iTV TV series Sharpe's Challenge. In 2006 Lakshmi appeared in ABC's TV series The Ten Commandments with Dougray Scott, Naveen Andrews, and Omar Sharif. Padma took over as hostess of the popular TV cooking competition series Top Chef in 2006 during its second season and continues in 2007 in its third season.
Her first cookbook Easy Exotic was awarded Best First Book at the 1999 World Cookbook Awards at Versailles. She was host of the Food Network series, Padma's Passport, which is part of the larger series Melting Pot. She has also been a guest host on parts of the British culinary tourism show Planet Food, hosting the segments on India and Spain. Her second cookbook Tangy, Tart, Hot and Sweet was released October 2, 2007. |
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